“Would you recognise any of the people who took a cricket bat to the driver?”
She snorted again. “After everything that happened this morning you could show me a photo of myself and I wouldn’t recognise my own face. But I would recognise the cricket bat. It was bright pink.”
Chung gave a compassionate nod of understanding, He smiled gently. “Perhaps If you close your eyes again and think ab—”
“When I close my eyes, I see the faces of three dead people, and mob of animals who set upon a man who may or may not have been a terrorist. I’d like to stop now.”
“You are remarkably calm.” Ponsonby said, glancing at Chung, fingers still tapping without sound.
“Panic in a situation such as this is not productive.”
“Productive?” Ponsonby frowned.
“Inspector, do you have preconceived notions of how someone ought to behave when experiencing trauma and its aftermath? Since I’m female, you expect me to be a quivering mess? I assure you, I am bewildered, sickened, by the events of the morning, regardless of how I show it or don’t show it.”
“You’re in shock.” Chung said.
She looked at him flatly. “Thank you so much for explaining that to me.”
There came a rap at the door, which then opened, a female police constable popping her head around the edge. “Excuse me, Inspector, Sergeant. They’re asking for you downstairs.”
Chung ceased the recording and stuffed the mobile in his jacket. He and Ponsonby rose at the same time. “Maybe it’s a good idea to take a break. We’ll be back in a bit, Mrs Valentine.”
A moment later, they were gone and Nurse Gibson returned with a china tea service for two, a selection of small triangle sandwiches, and a jug of water, which he set on the table. “There are some pyjamas in the wardrobe. They may be a little large; I guessed your size.” He poured her a cup of tea and handed it to her. “Let me tend to the things in the bathroom. There was such a rush to get you here I didn’t have to time to check if it was properly stocked.”
For a minute, Mae was alone with Felix. She took off his yellow therapy dog vest and he scampered about before flopping onto to the rug. A crustless triangle sandwich in hand, she left the table and went to the small sitting area where the windows were cleaner, but only marginally. She felt as manky as the windows. Jaysus, how she wanted to scrub the muck off the glass. That sort of activity might scrub the muck and gristly images of death from her flat, impassive mind. Noticing vests, the Inspector’s Elton John glasses—and imagining him in a feather outfit—was shock. It would pass. Eventually.
“Bathroom’s all ready.” Gibson said, coming out of the ensuite. “I’ve set some baby wash in the shower for you. You’ll want to use that; it’s milder and won’t sting the grazes in your scalp.”
The door swung open with a soft hiss. A man clomped into the room. Two bright red blotches stood on her brother’s white face, Olivia Newton-John’s If Not for You audible from his headphones.
Sean. Feck. She’d forgotten. Gibson had contacted her brother. Mae rose, glancing at the nurse.
“Maevy.” Sean ignored the dog pawing at him and made a beeline to her. Still built like the middleweight boxer he’d been at twenty, he wrapped her in muscled arms, moaning, “Oh, Maevy. what’re ya tryin’ to do to me?” he said loudly. “I get a call sayin’ you were hurt in that…that… attack in Regent’s Park, and I spent an hour runnin’ around trying to find ya here. Are ya hurt bad?” He grasped her elbows and held her away, looking her up and down. “Jaysus, look at ya, you’re a mess,” he half-shouted and let her go, a fist going to his mouth, his breath rushing in and out.
“I’m fine, Sean. I’m fine. I have a little cut on my head, that’s all.” Mae reached up, took his face between her hands and looked into bright blue eyes full of anxiety that circled close to a black hole of anguish. Then she let him go. He’d been drinking.
With a small sob, he jerked the headphones with one hand and dropped them around his neck. The headphones were a clear indication of the state of his mind; he wore them and listened to Olivia when he was hyper-aroused, when an external force had triggered anxiety that made his heart race, made him remember and relive horrifying memories. Swallowing, Sean leaned forward and pressed his forehead to hers. His skin was sweaty and he smelled of whiskey because self-soothing with music hadn’t been enough. “Just one,” he said. “Only one swig of the bottle, Mae. Sober for five years until today, and it’s that man’s fault,” he muttered over tinny Olivia. “Everything is his fault, that bloody man ya work for, that bloody man ya ma—”
“Sean,” she said, “I’m all right. I’m all right.” She patted his chest and drew back. “I just need a shower. Okay?” She glanced at Gibson watching them, the man’s face as passive as Sean’s was dynamic.
Sean exhaled and nodded. “Okay. Okay.” He dropped his eyes, looking at Felix pressing against his leg. “Comin’ in here I was nearly brickin’ it. You know I hate hospitals. Don’t know how I’m managin’ to hold in all the shit, but it’ll be fallin’ from me if I stay much longer. Ya put the heart crossways in me, Mae, and Janey Mack, the stink in here. Gimme the dog. I’ll take the little humper home.” He rested his hands on her shoulders and stared at her, a deep groove between his brows. “You’re, okay, okay?”
“I’m okay. Go home. You can see I’m fine. Go home. Take Felix home for me.”
“I just said I would, didn’t I, woman?”
Gibson gave a slight cough.
Sean snapped upright, head turning, to eye Gibson testily. “And who might you be?” he blustered.
Mae turned side on and made the introduction. “Sean, this is the charge nurse, Captain Gibson. Captain, this is my brother.”
Sean straightened, his disquiet suddenly shifting. “Beg your pardon, Captain. Padre Sean Vincenzo,” he said, like the polite former military officer he had once been. Etiquette and formalities, she and Sean had lived their lives wrapped up in professional rituals and routines of one sort or another. Routine was what Sean needed. “Army, navy?”
“I was a matron in the AMS, Queen Alexandra’s Nursing Corps, but I’m a clinical nurse specialist now.” He held out his hand. “I’m very happy to meet you, Padre.” Gibson smiled amiably and glanced at the headphones, then at the slender dog nosing the man’s trousers. “That’s splendid little dog there. Bet he’d outrun my little rocket Jack Russell.”
Sean shook his hand. “Growing up, we had ratters, feisty little things they were—a lot like my sister. This one here’s like a skinny little babby, but he’ll do.” Sean bent and lifted Felix. “He’ll do nicely,” he said, cuddling the animal close. “You’ll excuse me, Captain. I’m not fond of hospitals. I’ll take the dog and go now, Mae. You tell me when ya want to come home, and I’ll meet ya outside. Unless that man ya,” he sniffed derisively, “work for will fetch ya.”
“As soon as the doctor tells me I can go, I’ll let you know.”
“Here.” Gibson held out a card. “I understand. I know it’s a challenge, believe me. I know that every day. Every. Day. If you ever want to talk, have a coffee, give me a ring.” When Sean took the card, Gibson handed over the little yellow therapy assistant vest the dog had worn earlier. Mae had left it on the table, “Put this on him,” Gibson said. “That way, no one will give you shit for having a dog with you.”
Sean wrapped Felix in the vest, gave them both a nod, and the door hissed shut behind him. For a few minutes came a blessed silence. Gibson moved to fuss with pillows on the bed. Mae continued watching pigeons that had faces of the morning’s deceased, and wondered if poo glued-on feathers could be removed with soap and water alone. Then there was a soft rap on the door and the hinge shushhhed.
“Good afternoon. Are you lost?” Gibson asked.
“I’m here for Valentine,” Kitt said, hostility shading his politeness. “Who are you?”
“Mr Gibson is my nurse.” Mae went on looking at a pigeon that had the cracked face of a dead woma
n. “This is Major Kitt, my employer, Mr Gibson. Felix, the dog, belongs to him, as did the car involved in the accident.”
“I see.”
“How bad is it, Valentine,” Kitt said quietly.
“The car undrivable, sir.”
“And you, Valentine?”
“I’m fine, sir,” she said.
There was a long pause. “Would you mind giving us a moment, Gibson?”
“Certainly. I’m done here for now,” Gibson halted at the door. “Please don’t stay long. Mrs Valentine needs rest.” The hinge shushed open and shut.
There was another moment of silence. Kitt looked down at the pattern on the reproduction Persian rug. He exhaled softly. “Are you all right, Mae?”
“I hit my head. How did you know about the car?”
“I saw it on the conference room wall screen, wreckage, paramedics, bodies covered with sheets, your pink shoe live via the CCTV cameras I pointed out to you this this morning. Are you really all right?”
“I’m fine. How did you find me?”
“I’m a spy. I have connections.”
Mae turned to face him. He looked at her, his face a mask of cool nothing bar the small trickle beneath his runny nose. She shrugged. “I got seven stitches. And this time I didn’t need to hold your hand when the doctor sewed me like I did when I got the three in my lip last year.”
From the top of her head to the flimsy hospital slippers on her feet, Kitt inspected her, taking in dirt-streaked red burns on her neck, a scabbing slice on her right ear, faintly puffy, pinkish nose, and hazel eyes tinged with half-concealed tension. “Come here,” he said, suddenly gravel-voiced, and she came to him, her gait even, her eyes clear. She put her arms about him, her head on his chest, and he held her lightly, instead of crushing her to him and never letting go again. She looked awful, smelled terrible, and he didn’t give a damn. His eyes burned and he let them go on burning, tears meandering along his cheek.
Her hands stroked down his back. The woman had been through hell and she was comforting him. “Don’t cry, Hamish,” she said.
“This isn’t crying, Mae,” he sniffled. “This is snivelling. If you want to know about crying, I thought one of those bodies I saw on the CCTV could have been yours. After I got access to the scene, I went to the morgue and looked at photos taken of the victims. The dead had just begun arriving for the coroner. None of the photos were you, and twenty-five minutes ago my relief was so overwhelming I sobbed so hard I couldn’t stand.”
She reached into his rear pocket, tugged out the neatly folded handkerchief he kept in there, and tucked it in his hand. “Blow your nose.”
Kitt let her go and did as he was told.
“Take me home.”
“I can’t. You’re under observation for concussion.” He dabbed his eyes. “I spoke with your doctor. You did black out. You were sick. You were a little confused. Those are usually key signs of concussion.” He pocketed the handkerchief and started to take her in his arms again, but he knew there was someone—Gibson, most likely—on the other side of the door. “Where were you when it happened?”
“Inside your car,” she said.
He lifted her left hand and kissed the inside of her palm, just below her thumb. “Thank Christ for that small favour.”
“A woman died right in front of me.” She met his eyes. “It’s different, Kitt, seeing someone die the shite way those women did, and what those people did to the tipper driver, not being able to do anything… Jaysus, it’s all so…so…”
“Senseless.”
“Yes.”
His eyes wandered over her face, looking at her slightly swollen, pink nose, at the messy state of her hair, darkened with dried blood, at a patch where blue stitching closed a gash just above her hairline, at the dark smears of blood and blotchy red marks on her neck. “I am sorry you were part of it. And I’m sorry I can’t stay here long. But I’ll come back later and stay here with you, the whole night.”
She held his gaze, and asked, almost shyly, “Maybe you could take leave. We could go away somewhere.”
“I like that idea. I’d take you to Sicily, to visit with your friend Fiorella. We could eat her delightful food and watch her cheat in another game of Monopoly, but I’m sorry, I can’t. As of this morning, I’ve been reassigned to field duty. I’m off to Amsterdam.”
She reached up and touched his cheek. “There is something good that comes from this.”
“Good?” He released her hand. “A silver lining in a possible terror attack and our keeping our marriage secret? You’re in shock—you know you are—but tell me, where’s the good here, Mae?”
“You have a reprieve from paperwork and,” her eyes crinkled as she as smiled, her nose pink and slightly puffy, “you’re getting a new car.”
His mouth quirked and the phone he’d tucked inside his jacket pocket buzz-buzzed. He looked at the message from Bryce. Eaton. ID confirmed. Level 3, Ward B, 5 minutes. Another change of plans.
“Back to work?” she sighed.
“Yes. That was Bryce. I suspect he’s why you’re up here in this room with a private nurse looking after you instead of downstairs. After I looked at the photos in the morgue, I had to call in what I learned. We have confirmation, positive identification on one of two women that weren’t you.”
Mae went quiet for a moment and looked down at her left hand. “Who were they?”
“One was a fraud specialist investigator from Hedison’s, on the way to a meeting with me this morning.”
Her head came up, brows arching. “You knew her?”
“I was supposed to meet her this morning.”
She bit her lips together for a second, thinking. “Was she the woman with her face crushed or the woman with her torso crushed?”
“Oh, my love.”
Mae shrugged. “That’s what I keep seeing. What was her name?”
“Jill Charteris.”
“And the other woman?”
“Eva Eaton, a junior officer with The Consortium, and my trainee. The three of us were to travel together to Amsterdam.”
“I’m sorry. Thank you for telling me.” Her expression turned faraway. “I didn’t see it, but I think the tipper mounted the footpath and swerved before it hit your car. Maybe the driver was trying to avoid a mother with the pram. Maybe a jogger ran out in front of him. I don’t know. I can’t figure out how…Jill ended up crushed in between.”
The signs of traumatic shock manifested in all sorts of ways. He brushed a strand of hair from her forehead. “Listen. Whether it’s a terror attack or dreadful accident, it’s different, but it’s not different, Mae, and this won’t be easy.” His blue-grey eyes full of warmth, he leaned in and kissed her, very softly. “I’ll come back as soon as I can and we can talk about it. Talk about how to process this. If you want to. I’ll have Bryce bring you some clothes.” He lifted towels and a dressing gown she hadn’t noticed from the bed and put them on the arm of an easy chair. “Go, get cleaned up, and rest like you were told you to. You’re safe. That’s what matters.” He kissed her again, and left.
With a huff of frustration, Mae poured water into a teacup and guzzled it. She drew the curtains closed, turning the light in the room to dusk. Instead of undressing, she sat in the deep, comfortable wing-backed chair with a sprigged, Laura Ashley pattern, and set the empty teacup on the side table next to the chair. Then she shut her eyes, trying to exhale the nightmarish reality of what she’d seen, of what lingered with her eyes open or shut, of the void where emotion ought to have been.
She had lived when others had not. That in itself was disturbing, and not disturbing. It was different. But why was it different? She’d had witnessed death before, had ended the lives of two men, stumbled across bodies recently and not so recently dead. Why was seeing a woman die and the bodies of a nameless dead man and another woman any different? Why was witnessing a man being beaten to death any different? Why was she, as Ponsonby put it, so calm? Had she actually become desensi
tised to seeing death? Is that why this experience was so much more distorted?
Why was this experience blank and at the same time distorted?
She sat quietly, counting each inhale and exhale, focused, mindful of every breath until the questions ceased and deathly faces faded from view. When she opened her eyes, the mirror in the centre of the antique mahogany wardrobe near the ensuite bathroom returned a distorted reflection. Maybe it was a delayed response to the concussion she’d sustained when the tipper hit the Bentley, the airbag exploded to bloody her nose, the unbuckled seatbelt clasp had sliced her ear and she’d cracked her head on the side window. Last summer she’d had stitches in her lip. Today she’d had stitches in her scalp.
She blinked a few times, but the distortion remained, as did the man sitting in the wing-backed chair opposite hers. Dark-skinned and handsome, the older man smiled at her, and that smile was a distortion of everything a real smile was meant to be.
“Brigadier Llewelyn,” she said, her moment of tranquillity giving way to stony antipathy.
Chapter Four
Llewelyn sighed. “I can’t tell you how happy I am that you weren’t severely injured, Mrs Valentine.”
She stared at him coolly. The man had suspected her of crimes, had used her to ferret out rot within his own government department, had suspected Kitt of being crooked, yet she had a role to play, a husband to protect, a marriage to keep secret. “Thank you,” she said.
True to Your Service Page 4